July 30, 2016
Three Eritrean plays
The three plays in this collection – A Village Dream by Mesgumn Zerai, Aster by Esaias Tseggai and The Snare by Solomon Dirare, have been published with the primary intention of providing outstanding short plays by some of Eritrean’s best known playwrights, in English, for use in Eritrean schools to support English teaching and help teachers use drama in schools.
The publication in 1999 of Alemseged Tesfai’s The Other War ( inContemporary African Plays, eds Banham and Plastow, Metheun ) translated from Tigrinya, was the first chance non-Tigrinya speakers had to encounter Eritrean theater; a secondary aim therefore is to make more Eritrean theatre writing available to the world community through publication in an international language.
1 – A Village Dream is a delightful play with the feeling of a folk story exploring the inequality of relationship and workloads between men and women.
2 – The Snare is full of suspense and unexpected twists in the tale, which tells of the attempts of liberation fighter to escape from surrounding Ethiopian troops and
from treachery nearer to home.
3 – Aster juxtaposes the life in the mountains of the freedom fighters with the chilling despair comrade who has to face up to a meeting with his fighter wife, Aster, after she has spent months trying to track him down.
NB: Distributor: Awghet Bookstores
